


Facing Demons (and a Titan, Too)

by Star_Going_Supernova



Series: If You Give a Titan a Brownie [3]
Category: Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Cute, Day At The Beach, Fluff, Gen, Introspection, Maddie's still living at Castle Bravo, Mark is very "!!!!" about Godzilla being there, Post-Godzilla (2014), Pre-KotM, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29932902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: After two long months, Mark is able to see his daughter again. Their reunion isn't quite what he expected, given that no one bothered to warn him about their... guest.(Or, Mark is forced to face the reality that the pictures Ilene had been sending him were not, contrary to his wildest hopes, photoshopped.)
Relationships: Godzilla (Legendary | MonsterVerse) & Madison Russell, Ilene Chen & Mark Russell, Madison Russell & Mark Russell, Mark Russell & Rick Stanton
Series: If You Give a Titan a Brownie [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783387
Comments: 23
Kudos: 53





	Facing Demons (and a Titan, Too)

**Author's Note:**

> Sheesh, been a while since I added to this series! Glad to be back to it!
> 
> I borrowed a line from the movie; I’m sure many of you will be able to tell which. And thanks to an-uncultured-taco for the idea of Maddie climbing onto Godzilla’s snout! 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

When Ilene asked if he wanted to visit Maddie, Mark had surprised himself by not immediately jumping at the chance. As much as he wanted to see his daughter again, he didn’t want to be the same man as he was nearly two months ago now. He didn’t want to be the same person as the one who forgot she was there to the extent that she was able to go missing for _hours_ without him noticing. And he hadn’t even realized she was gone—no, Ilene had been the one to bring her absence to his attention, when she told him that Maddie was at Castle Bravo.

How long would it have taken him to remember his seven-year-old daughter _existed?_

When he had hesitated to answer, Ilene had told him that she wouldn’t have extended the offer if she didn’t think he had made improvements. She wasn’t willing to let him take Maddie back with him, but a weekend visit to reassure him that she was safe and happy wouldn’t hurt.

So Mark had agreed and they decided on a date and time, and Ilene gave him a location.

(It was with a petty sort of satisfaction and pride that Mark learned he was the first of Maddie’s parents to receive this offer. Emma, who he hadn’t spoken to outside of passive-aggressive emails regarding their impending divorce, hadn’t been showing many signs of healing, like Ilene was looking for. This feeling was closely followed by guilt, because Maddie didn’t deserve to have an absent mother.)

Friday had approached, Mark had packed an overnight bag, and he was finally flown from one Monarch base to another. Their meeting place wasn’t Castle Bravo, however. Ilene had chosen a private, stateside beach.

His driver had pointed him in the direction of the trail to the staircase down to the water, and Mark could say he was expecting many things.

Godzilla was not one of them.

He nearly had a heart attack at the sight of the Titan laying belly-down in the shallows. And then he saw Maddie _very close_ to him and his whole body locked up with tension, such that only his iron-tight grip on the stair railing kept him from tumbling the rest of the way down.

Ilene appeared at the bottom of the wooden staircase. He wheezed at her, terrified and furious.

She rolled her eyes. “You knew very well that she had met Godzilla, Mark. We sent you pictures.”

“It’s _different,_ ” he insisted as he stumbled toward her on numb legs. “I told myself the pictures were photoshopped.”

She rolled her eyes harder.

“You couldn’t have _warned_ me?” he asked, reaching the sand. He immediately dropped his bag and plopped down to sit on the second step up from the ground. Despite his desire to close his eyes and pretend this was all a nightmare of epic proportions, Mark peeked over at the shoreline.

Godzilla, tragically, was still there. So was Maddie, and Serizawa, of all people. The two of them were seated in the sand, building an impressive sand castle together. Their mouths were moving, but the way they kept looking to the Titan not five feet away from them made it clear who all were involved in the conversation.

Ilene sat beside him, smiling, clearly rather pleased with herself.

“I would never have guessed, but Godzilla makes for an excellent babysitter,” she said. “And it’s very nice of Maddie to help him keep Dr. Serizawa occupied.”

Mark couldn’t help the surprised huff of laughter that burst out of him. He buried his face in his hands, despairing over his choice of friends. “Just—tell me it’s safe. The safest. That nothing could possibly ever go wrong when she’s that close to his mouth—” he groaned, feeling a headache coming on— “with all those teeth, and that’s where his atomic breath comes from—”

“Calm down before you give yourself a heart attack,” she admonished him. “Of course she’sperfectly safe, Mark. Honestly. You think I would be careless with her safety like that?”

“You willingly live underwater in an area a Titan frequents,” he grumbled at her. “No offense, Ilene, but I don’t completely trust your idea of what’s safe.”

“Then don’t. Look at them, and, ignoring Godzilla’s teeth for a moment, tell me you see a dangerous situation.”

Peeling his hands away from his face, Mark did as she asked. It was the least he could do, considering she’d not only gotten him to take his own recovery seriously, but had been watching over Maddie for going on two months.

Ignoring the elephant in the room—or rather, the Titan on the beach—Mark first focused on everything else. A bonfire was burning cheerfully off to the side, with a little campfire-esque setup around it. Looked like hot dogs were on the menu. Beside it was a picnic table, and between that and a selection of collapsible chairs, a merry little gathering was taking place.

No one else seemed concerned about Godzilla’s presence, he begrudgingly admitted to himself.

He recognized a few familiar faces in the small group: Rick, flooder of backyards, for one, and if Ilene was here, Ling probably was, too; Vivienne, sat facing the ocean, holding a professional quality camera in her hands, periodically raising it to snap a picture of the trio at the shoreline; a couple G-teamers that he remembered from pictures, the ones where Maddie was wearing matching shirts with them.

A short distance away sat two dormant Ospreys. Someone he didn’t know hopped down one of the ramps, victoriously lifting two two-liter bottles above their head. A cheer rose up from the crowd.

Most of them were wearing swimwear, with t-shirts and and baggy tanks keeping them safe from too nasty of a sunburn. It looked like some had even already been in the water.

Finally running out of distractions, Mark dragged his eyes to the ocean. Godzilla was _huge_ up close, even laying down on his belly. Both Serizawa and Maddie, in addition to their own swimsuits and t-shirts, wore silly floppy hats, keeping their faces in the shade.

Their sandcastle, apparently now complete, had been set aside as they both worked on building what sure as hell looked to be a to-scale Godzilla beside it. They were both laughing, as if certain death wasn’t quite literally looming over them.

Mark looked at Godzilla just in time to see the Titan _roll his eyes,_ as if that made sense at all.

Try as he might, though, disregarding the passive threat any animal with sharp teeth naturally posed, he couldn’t argue against Ilene’s claim of safety.

“Has he ever eaten a human?” he asked.

“Not to our knowledge,” Ilene answered without skipping a beat. “His taste tends more toward brownies.”

Before he could muster up a response to that, Maddie’s head lifted from her task, and a moment later, he heard her delighted shout when she spotted him.

She scrambled to her feet, careful not to damage her and Serizawa’s sand structures, and ran straight for him. “Dad!” she cried. “You’re here, you’re here!”

He found his will to move in time to sweep forward and lift her clear off the ground. She giggled as he spun her around with a shout of his own.

Two months was a long time to go without seeing your kid. He hadn’t realized just how long it’d been before now, when he was finally able to tuck her against his chest and obnoxiously kiss her cheek, Maddie wiggling and yelping all the while.

He made sure to pull away with a loud _smack_ noise, setting off her laughter all over again. Mark watched her delight with equal amounts of heartbreak and joy. He’d missed two months of this, he thought, over and over again. When they were this young, two months was an eternity.

Speechless with emotion, he could only smile helplessly at his daughter as she settled into his arms.

“Hi,” she said once she’d calmed down. “Aunt Ilene said you’re gonna stay the whole weekend.”

“That’s right,” he told her. “If that’s okay with you?”

“Of course!” She leaned forward to wrap her arms around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder. “I missed you.”

He bit his tongue, focused on the physical pain instead of the emotional pain, and said, “I’ve missed you, too, kiddo.”

“Emails aren’t the same,” Maddie whispered.

“No,” Mark said. “They really aren’t, are they?” He took a shaky breath, then another, steadier one. “How’ve you been, Maddie? Sure sounds like you’ve been having a pretty great time.”

She sat back and nodded vigorously. “Everyone’s super nice! They let me pretend to pilot the Ospreys, and I got to help in the lab yesterday, and the cooks always cut my sandwiches just right! And, and, Aunt Viv’s been helping me with my homework and she makes it really fun, and last week, we had movie night on the top deck and Godzilla came to watch at the end!”

On the one hand, Mark was unspeakably relieved that Maddie wasn’t suffering. On the other, he was a bit jealous of how much he’d missed.

Of course, he really only had himself to blame for that.

“You’ll have to tell me all about it,” he said, summoning his enthusiasm and setting aside his regrets to torture himself with later. “What’s that you and Serizawa are building?”

“It’s what we think Castle Bravo would look like if it was _actually_ a castle.” She shook her head in childishly serious disappointment. “I think the real thing should be called Tower Bravo instead, ’cause it’s nothing like a castle. But Doc said it was named that for a reason.”

Hopefully, no one had actually told her the real reason. Mark suspected his daughter, the giver of brownies to Titans, would take offense.

“And a little sand-Godzilla to go with it?” he asked.

She perked right back up. “Yeah! Every Castle Bravo’s gotta have a Godzilla!”

He chuckled, shaking his head in amusement as his gaze drifted away from her for a moment. It landed on Godzilla, the real one, and a cold chill went down his spine and raised the hair on his arms when he found the Titan’s own gaze locked on him.

Maddie was saying something, he knew, but he could barely hear her over the rushing in his ears and the memory of collapsing buildings and crashing footsteps playing in his head. That same creature who had helped destroy a city, turning it to ash and rubble, was casually sprawled in the surf not even a block’s worth of distance away.

Only now, with those fiery eyes watching his every move, did he truly comprehend that.

Ilene was suddenly at his side, a hand on his shoulder blade. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind, Maddie. How about we go see whether the hot dogs are ready? After we eat, you can show your dad your sandcastle.”

He’d missed something in his frozen terror. The pictures from the brownie incident, the ones that definitely weren’t photoshopped no matter how much he wanted them to be, came to mind, and he felt like they must have come from some alternate dimension. How could Maddie stand to be near Godzilla without being overcome by self-preservation? It was all he could do not to run or collapse on the spot, yet not ten minutes ago, she’d been sitting practically within reach without a care in the world.

And then, in a true twist of irony, Mark discovered he’d been secondary to Godzilla’s focus, as Maddie wiggled out of his distracted hold and went bounding toward the rest of the group, and his head minutely turned to follow her.

All that heart-stopping fear, and Godzilla hadn’t even truly been paying attention to him.

“Are you all right?” Ilene asked as he took deep breaths to steady his nerves. “You went quite pale all of a sudden.”

“You’re crazy,” he whispered, half meaning it. “All of you. You’re all just standing around, calm as could be, like _the_ apex predator isn’t sitting right there.”

“I’d say we got used to it, but that’s not entirely true,” she said softly, deliberately stepping in front of him to block his view of Godzilla. Or, most of Godzilla. “Given our specialties, our line of work, our location, even… most of us simply don’t consider him a danger to us. Even before the brownie,” she added with a slight smile.

“You’re not afraid at all?”

She thought for a moment before slowly shaking her head. “It’s not that we don’t fear him,” she explained, careful, like she was testing the words in her head before she spoke them aloud. “But it’s… an absent fear. A distant one. I—as many of us do, I believe—fear him the way we fear, oh… say, an Osprey crashing. It’s something we think of once in a while, but it’s not something we actively focus on.”

“So, a false sense of security,” Mark said, scoffing.

“Trust,” she corrected. “I trust the pilots of the Ospreys to know what they’re doing. I trust Godzilla not to decide we’re his next target.” Ilene paused, then sighed. “The pictures don’t do it justice,” she told him gently. “I have never seen a creature so large be more aware of his size than when he interacts with Maddie.”

She offered him one last smile before turning to go to the campfire. Mark stayed rooted in place as he watched Maddie break away from the group to bound back over to Serizawa, who got to his feet at the summons for lunch. Before coming back, Maddie splashed knee-deep into the water to say something to Godzilla, patting his snout as she did.

She was minuscule compared to him. So tiny, Mark doubted the Titan could even properly see her where she stood.

Yet, when his massive head nudged forward against her, Maddie didn’t so much as stumble backwards. She laughed brightly, gave him one last pat, and returned to dry land.

Grinning widely as she ran up to him, Maddie grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the group of chatting humans. “ _C’mon,_ Aunt Ilene said we gotta eat before I can introduce you to Godzilla!”

It was just about the last thing he wanted, in all honesty. But he had roughly two full days of being with his daughter, so if that meant forcing down his prey instinct—the only functional one in present company, apparently—then so be it.

Mark would meet Godzilla.

• • • 

He found it concerningly easy to forget there was a Titan napping at his back during lunch. Conversation flowed, the food was good, and Mark couldn’t deny it was nice to be back among some of his old friends, and a few newer ones as well.

No one had a bad word to say of Maddie, and he got the feeling it wasn’t out of some sense of politeness. It settled something inside him to finally have proof right in front of him that his daughter was being well cared for.

While Maddie was distracted, he relayed the newest updates about his and Emma’s divorce proceedings—which he definitely needed to talk to Maddie about. The question of custody had so far been skirted around, and he was _not_ looking forward to that conversation with Emma.

As he watched Ilene help Maddie get seconds, though, he amusedly thought to himself that perhaps a third contender was in the ring. He’d be forever grateful to her for intervening as she had. Who knew what might have happened if he and Emma had gone on as they had been, constantly forgetting about their seven-year-old daughter.

Lunch ended all too quickly for Mark’s tastes, because the moment his plate had been tossed out, Maddie was at his side, vibrating with excitement.

Mark had to hold his breath to keep from making a noise—bellowed profanity or instinct-driven whimper, he wasn’t sure—as he was led across the beach to where Godzilla was sprawled, eyes closed.

Just as he thought to suggest they leave him to his nap, the Titan’s head moved and he opened his eyes. Their fiery color made him all the more a monster to Mark.

Maddie skidded to a stop at the water’s edge, at least remembering that her father wasn’t dressed for swimming like she was. She tugged lightly on his hand, as if she didn’t already have his full attention.

“Dad, this is Godzilla! He’s lots of fun and he likes brownies a whole lot!”

Remembering the pictures, Mark nodded faintly.

She continued, “Godzilla, this is my dad! He’s the best and I love him a whole lot, even when he and Mom yell at each other!”

Mark just barely managed not to wince. His effort was wasted when Godzilla raised his head and snorted at him. With a splash, he settled back down, staring eerily right at him.

He stared back, bewildered and a bit lost, and also trying not to show how much he didn’t want to be there. After a long, quiet pause, he felt Maddie tugging at his hand again.

“He said hi,” she told him when he looked down at her. “So it’s your turn now.” Turning to Godzilla, she mouthed something at him that Mark didn’t quite catch, but whatever it was, the Titan apparently understood, or at least pretended to understand. He huffed like a person might, to convey amusement, in a way that even Mark would’ve had trouble denying.

Part of him was internally smiling over how adorable his daughter was, while another part was screeching in alarm that a _Titan,_ of all things, was either intelligent enough to read someone’s lips or intelligent enough to know how to pretend he had. Both prospects terrified him, doubly so for the fact that Maddie was involved.

Trying valiantly to sound normal, Mark offered Godzilla a closed-lip smile and a nearly emotionless, “Hello.”

“Ugh. Grown ups are so _boring,_ ” Maddie muttered despairingly. She released his hand and practically flew into the ocean before Mark could even hope to stop her.

She splashed Godzilla in the face and immediately swerved away from the shore. Mark’s heart spasmed wildly in his chest before lodging somewhere in his throat, trapping Maddie’s name behind it.

Godzilla backed up to keep pace with Maddie, and as soon as the water was deep enough, he tilted his head to stick his snout under. With a single huff through his nose, a veritable fountain shot up in the air, cascading down around Maddie as she laughingly shrieked.

“He’s like a portable water park,” someone commented behind Mark, almost startling him into stepping forward into the tide. He turned a baleful glare on Rick as he slapped his hand down on Mark’s right shoulder and gave him a little shake. “And a lifeguard,” he added.

Mark scoffed but didn’t pull away.

“I’m serious, man,” Rick said, nodding out to where Godzilla seemed to have retreated far enough to maneuver better. “Maddie couldn’t drown out there if she tried.”

Another fountain sprayed up in a glittering arc.

“But the _size_ of him doesn’t worry you?” Mark demanded. “He taps her too hard, and he could send her flying. Or drag her under, or—”

Rick interrupted him with a single, firm shake of his head. “I know how it looks, Mark. Trust me when I say we were all careful right from the start. We wouldn’t let her go out there if we weren’t a hundred percent sure she was safe.”

“But how can you trust that? How can you trust _him?_ ”

His friend sighed and didn’t answer right away. Instead, they watched for a minute, silence stretching between them, as Godzilla glided toward Maddie and came to a perfect standstill in front of her, his head half-submerged, like a crocodile. The comparison chilled Mark to the bone despite the warm sun beating down on him.

Giggling, Maddie swam closer until Godzilla’s head suddenly raised up slightly, with Maddie perched on his snout. She twisted around to wave at them, beaming.

Rick lifted his free hand to wave back, simultaneously sliding his left down Mark’s arm to grab his wrist and wiggle his arm up in the air between them. Yanking away, Mark rolled his eyes and waved properly. Maddie’s laughter easily reached them over the water.

“I know it’s hard to watch them and not see your own kid, but do me a favor and try,” Rick said as they lowered their arms. “Try and just see them as a giant animal and a kid. Not a Titan from San Francisco, and not your daughter.”

“Rick…”

“Mark.”

Heaving a sigh, Mark gave it a go. With immense effort, he mentally took a step back and pretended like the view in front of him was one of strangers. And, admittedly, he couldn’t deny the unbelievably gentle way Godzilla moved, like he somehow knew exactly how rough he could be with a little girl.

“Fine,” he groused. “If you ignore the… details… it’s almost…” With effort, he spit out, “Heartwarming.

“Call it like it is—straight out of a Ghibli movie, man.”

Surprise shot through him. “You watch Ghibli movies?”

Rick raised an eyebrow at him. “We’ve had a seven-year-old at the base for nearly two months. We’re all watching Ghibli movies.”

He tilted his head, conceding the point. After another minute spent watching Maddie point in different directions and Godzilla dutifully going where she wanted, Mark snorted. “How am I supposed to just… be okay with this?”

“You’re not,” Rick said, matter-of-fact. “Pretty sure that’s not how trauma works.”

“Then—”

“No one’s asking you to hang out with Godzilla. Yeah, you’ll have to swallow down your protests when Maddie wants to play with him, but you’re already doing a good job of that. Maybe someday you’ll look at the two of them and realize you trust him with her. Maybe you won’t.” Rick bumped their shoulders together and jerked his head back at the group of adults. “And in the meantime, you can see about getting used to it while talking with the big kids.”

“What an honor,” Mark drawled. He still followed Rick back over to the fire pit, and only really glanced over his shoulder a few times.

• • • 

It was as they were packing up to return to Castle Bravo that Mark got Serizawa alone.

“How’d it happen?” he asked bluntly. “Godzilla didn’t just pop out of the water one day with a brownie waiting for him.”

“You believe I can answer that for you?”

“I’d bet money you were involved.”

Serizawa chuckled. “I first managed to coax Godzilla out of the water a few months before her arrival. My initial purpose, to attempt a closer study of him, quickly changed.”

“To what?”

“He is an excellent listener,” Serizawa told Mark. “I’d like to think, language barrier aside, that we became friends.”

Before, Mark might’ve scorned that. But now—well. The proof that a human could befriend a Titan was swimming right in front of him. “So you introduced them.”

“Yes. I thought Maddie might enjoy it, and I’d certainly mentioned her enough to Godzilla.”

“And she wasn’t afraid?” Mark asked.

“No. Not even in the beginning.” He smiled. “In fact, according to Dr. Stanton, Maddie was in his favor from the start. I believe she likened him to a friend of hers who beat up some bullies?”

_Of course she did._ Perplexed beyond words, Mark glared down at the ground. He couldn’t comprehend how she didn’t seem at all affected by San Francisco, and he couldn’t figure out if it had to do with her age or something else.

“We all heal at different rates, Mark,” Serizawa said quietly, proving that he wasn’t hiding his thoughts as well as he would’ve liked.

“But how?” he whispered. “How can she just…” He looked at the bay, in time to watch Maddie hurl herself off Godzilla’s head with a joyful shriek as she plummeted into the water.

Serizawa gripped his shoulder. “Your thought processes and hers are fundamentally different. I doubt she ever blamed him in the first place, and it doesn’t matter why—whether it was from a place of ignorance or forgiveness. There is nothing wrong with you not seeing it the same way.”

“But where do I start?” he asked desperately. “I want to get better, for her. And even if she’s not chummy with Godzilla, I can’t—it’s not healthy, Serizawa. What I feel. You guys are keeping her for a reason, and I don’t always want to be that reason.”

For a long moment, his old friend merely stared at him, almost but not quite sad. “Sometimes the only way to heal our wounds is to make peace with the demons who created them. Whether she means it, whether she understands it, that’s what Maddie is making you do—face your demons.”

“And the making peace part? How do I start doing that?”

Serizawa looked out over the water. His lips twitched up in a slight grin. “You let her play with him.” He looked back at Mark, as smug as he ever got, but gently, as if to soften the blow of the truth. “Wouldn’t you say you’ve already begun?”

• • •

When Godzilla veritably beached himself to deliver Maddie to her human caretakers, Mark didn’t know who was more surprised when he genuinely thanked the Titan for watching out for Maddie—himself, or Godzilla. Maddie smiled brightly up at him, a shade too innocently to not know at least some of what was happening.

But Godzilla’s snort and minuscule head-toss were disturbingly startled, for a non-human creature.

Mark’s personal surprise climbed when Maddie tugged him a little closer to the looming snout and he didn’t resist. It was quick, over and done, but he patted the scales in front of him at her behest.

A little bit dazed with himself, he offered Godzilla a brief smile before turning to slowly walk away.

“He’ll come around,” he heard Maddie whisper. “It’s not his fault he’s a grown-up.”

Shaking his head in amusement, he offered his hand when she bounded up to his side. She took it, and the warmth in Mark’s chest expanded like the sun. Heart attacks aside, it had been a good day. He still had tomorrow with his daughter, and as much as it would hurt to leave her at the end of his visit, he could do so with the knowledge that it wouldn’t be forever.

He’d keep healing, he’d keep making peace with his demons, and he’d probably keep receiving pictures of Maddie and Godzilla.

At the bottom of the ramp into the Osprey, Maddie paused and twisted around to wave goodbye to Godzilla. And Mark? He waved right along with her.

**Author's Note:**

> This was very fun to write! Love y'all bunches! ❤️
> 
> • [my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) •


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